Dear Readers, this week I was in Dorchester, visiting my Dad. Regular readers will know that he has vascular dementia, and that he is in a wonderful nursing home. I am grateful that I can be so confident that he is being looked after, but nonetheless I am always filled with trepidation when I go to see him, as I never know whether he will be wide awake and full of stories or out for the count. To ease my nerves before a visit, I have taken to having an early morning walk before I pop into the home. For this visit, I explored part of the ‘Walks’ and took a wander down by the land that used to be the water meadows.

But first, I spot a doggie in the window. I remember my Mum singing the song to me when I was a little girl, and so seeing this hound made me smile. He or she was less impressed when I got my camera out, however, and so I hurried on, past the ‘Top O’ The Town’ roundabout and along the ‘Walks’.

There is a statue of Thomas Hardy on the corner. You are never allowed to forget that ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ was set in Dorchester and indeed, in January I am lucky to get a bed in my favourite B&B because it is taken over by a professor and group of Hardy students from the US. There is a pub called Hardys, and many plaques about the town commemorating the author and his works. I rather prefer Trollope meself, but I do confess to a lasting fondness for Jude the Obscure, with its unforgettable child character ‘Little Father Time’ who murders his sibllings and himself, and leaves a message ‘Done because we are too menny’, an incident that teeters on the very edge between gothic horror and black comedy. For me anyway.

And here is a close-up of Hardy with his hat.

The walks were originally the boundary of the old Roman city of Durnovaria (and I pass the remains of a Roman town house, currently off limits to the public while some restoration work is done). During the English Civil War, the walls were fortified again: Dorchester was a hotbed of Puritanism but found it expedient to change sides several times during the conflict, earning it the title ‘the southern capital of coat turning’. However, in Victorian times the tops of the Walks were levelled and trees were planted, providing the splendid shady avenues that we see today.

There are some Victorian walls studded with the local flints, and I love the way that these so easily turn into rock gardens.

Lesser celandines nestle in the crooks of the tree roots.

And there are some lush patches of the cuckoopint that I noticed last time I was here, though still no flowers.

I cross the road and head steeply downhill towards the river Frome – this is where I finished my walk last time I was here. There is a plaque giving a bit of history about the area: the land round about was once flooded seasonally to provide a much longer season of grass, In Dorset, the water was diverted from the meadows back into the river in late February and early March so that sheep could graze. Once the sheep left, the fields were flooded again until it was time for the hay crop to be harvested, after which cows were put onto the fields again. The key factor was that the water was kept moving, so it didn’t form stagnant pools that might damage the grass, but instead encouraged it to thrive.  The pond below, known as John’s pond, was part of the system for regulating the water, but might also have been used as a sheep dip. The water from the Frome and its tributaries also powered a number of mills up and down the river. It all seems like a most sensible and sustainable way of using the natural cycles of ebb and flow to make the most of the land without destroying it. What a shame we no longer do this: only 3% of the UK’s ancient meadows survive.

I stride on down the path, but as usual things start to catch my eye, and my pace slows. Look at the fresh new growth on this willow, for example.

And as I tune in, I notice birds singing heartily about every ten metres. I have not been paying attention and concluded that they were robins. Not so! These are male chaffinches, and they are vigorous songsters, belting out their message of desirability with raised crest and open bill.

I even captured a snippet of song.

I cross the Blue Bridge (built in 1877) and pause for a moment to watch the water tumble underneath. There is plenty of it: folk that I’ve spoken to say they can’t remember a winter like it, with so much rain. This, I fear, is the pattern of things for the south of England under global warming, at least as far as we can tell: wet, mild winters and hot, humid summers.

I like this little bridge too, and the way that it makes a perfect circle with its reflection. Bridges like this were once used by horse-drawn vehicles to bring the hay in, but this seems rather too narrow for such an enterprise.

I am also training myself to focus on reflections, they can turn a churned-up muddy pathway into something rather magical.

In the field opposite there are some magnificent specimen trees, presumably spared because they provided shade for sheep or cattle in summer. Some older trees might also have provided a spot for the farmer and his team of plough animals to have a rest and eat their lunch. I love it when they’re left, although I imagine with the larger farm machinery that some people have now they can be a bit of a pain. In an online forum where I was asking about this, nearly all the respondents said that they would leave the trees in their fields because they loved to see them. There is hope, people.

And at the end of the walk I find a field full of sheep, with many of them happily resting under a tree. Maybe the roots provide a bed for animals as well as for lesser celandine.

And look at this magnificent semi-wild bed at the bottom of the lane, full of primroses and narcissi, winter heliotrope and cuckoo pint, forget-me-nots and ferns.

Back I go towards Dorchester. I meet a very nice lady who is walking her dog, and she tells me that the locals are currently fighting a plan to build 250 houses on the water meadow site. We need new homes, I know, but building them on an area which is at the confluence of three separate streams seems ludicrous in view of all the flooding that we’re currently having. Doesn’t anybody care, or is it all just about making a quick buck?

And then it’s back along the lane…...past this cut branch, which reminds me a bit of a screaming face in profile…

and back to the centre of Dorchester. When I get into the nursing home, Dad is sitting up looking very dapper. I notice that he’s very breathless, though – he has COPD, and has had one chest infection after another this year. I had been planning to take him out, but then I notice that today is Spanish Day in the home. We decide to have lunch in the home, sitting at the nice table for two looking over the gardens. Spanish music is playing, but for Dad, Spanish music can only ever be Julio Iglesias. After all, he spent more than ten years travelling to and working in Spain, so he knows what he’s on about.

‘What do you think of the music, Tom?’ asks J, one of Dad’s favourite carers. She is wearing a flower in her hair in honour of the occasion.

Dad grimaces and considers being polite, then decides against it in favour of honesty.

‘It’s a bit ropey’, he says.

‘Never mind’, says J, plonking down a bottle of white wine and bottle of red wine. ‘This’ll cheer you up’.

Dad looks at the wine.

‘Pinot grigio’, he says to me. ‘That’s not Spanish, it’s Italian’.

This dementia journey is quite a thing. Dad isn’t quite sure who I am, but he knows when he wine isn’t Spanish.

Fortunately, he likes it when it’s served, in plastic wine glasses with tops and bottoms that snap together.

‘I’m going to take that bottle back  to the room’, says Dad with a twinkle.

‘I think it’s for everyone, Dad’, I say.

‘Most of them won’t want any’, he says, looking around at the rest of the residents. He has a point. Many of them are asleep, everyone is on medication and a lot of folk gave up drinking a long time ago. Fortunately J comes round to provide a second glass and all is well.

We have soup with paprika and chickpeas and spinach, chicken with actual black olives, and. most delightful of all, a churros, though with the chocolate inside rather than for dipping. I eat the lot, and Dad makes a good fist of it.

‘They’ve put Syb in a separate room’, says Dad. Sybil was my Mum, who died in 2018. Dad hasn’t mentioned her for ages.

‘Have they, Dad?’ I ask. It’s painful when he talks about Mum like this, but for me rather than for him. I wait to see what he’ll say next.

‘And I can’t seem to find her’, he says. But then he throws his hands up in his typical gesture of stoical acceptance. ‘I’ll see her eventually’, he says. ‘But now, I need to go to the toilet’.

We walk back to his room.

‘Do you want me to wait?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m going to the toilet and then I’m going to have a rest’.

After a three-course meal and two glasses of wine, that’s how I feel too. I love that he dismisses me so gently, and that he isn’t concerned when I go. Gradually I am learning to be with this new way of being – nothing to do, no problems to fix. It’s a bit like relaxing into a hot bath, just letting go of my preconceptions and being with Dad wherever he is in the moment, joining him there. It’s a hard lesson for someone like me, who is so determined to try to control everything, but it’s a good one. I enjoy being with Dad, seeing the world through his eyes.

J told me a lovely story. Her Mum is very sick, and she had to take a few days off. When she came back to the home, the first thing that Dad asked her was ‘how’s your Mum?’ Dad has so little memory for the day to day, but he remembered that she had been distressed, and cared enough to ask. It’s so important not to make assumptions about what someone with dementia can and can’t understand. Being with Dad requires me to use all my faculties – my empathy, my imagination and my creativity – and I know that he is trying to connect and make sense of the world too. Strangely, this time with him might be the period when I most get to know the real Dad, the man that he’s been trying to cover up all these years, in all his late glory. It is a privilege to have the opportunity.

Dear Readers, I have always loved bright colours, and I come by it honestly: my Mum was always clad in shades of pink or turquoise or purple right up until the last months of her life. But she used to get very frustrated, because what she could buy was often largely dictated by what was ‘in fashion’.

‘It’s all mucky colours’ she would complain when the shops were full of camel and beige and taupe. She had a particular loathing for khaki, because it combined the attributes of ‘being green’ (an unlucky colour apparently), being militaristic (if there was one thing that Mum loathed it was an epaulette or a pair of cargo pants) and being neither green nor brown.

And what, you might ask, has this to do with heavenly bamboo? Well, there are fashions too in garden plants, and for many people, what they buy is limited to what the garden centre has in. Not everyone goes to specialist nurseries, or trusts the quality of the plants that they can buy online, and so if the garden centre is wall to wall petunias/Clematis montana/heavenly bamboo, then that is what they will have to buy.

In this past week, I have been falling over this plant in a variety of locations – in the gardens of East Finchley, in the municipal beds of Islington and in the planting at Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross. It is undoubtedly an attractive plant, but what, I wonder, is making it so ubiquitous? And does it have any of the pitfalls of ‘true’ bamboo (some varieties of which can take over your entire garden while you are hanging out the washing).

First things first. As mentioned in a previous post, heavenly bamboo is not a bamboo at all, but a member of the barberry (Berberis) family. It comes from East Asia, from the Himalayas to Japan, and its Latin name ‘Nandina‘ comes from the Japanese word ‘nanten‘, or ‘domesticated’. It has indeed been grown as a garden plant in Japan for hundreds of years, and there are many cultivars: the early spring foliage is pink in colour in some varieties, and it can also display scarlet autumn colour, which makes it a plant that punches well above its weight in a small garden. It arrived in the UK in 1804 but seems to have only become popular as a garden plant in the last few years – I don’t remember it at all when I was growing up, but feel free to correct me, as always!

Another reason for growing this plant might be its berries, which look most inviting, but herein lies a problem. Heavenly bamboo is toxic to birds and animals – the fruit contains compounds that can decompose to hydrogen cyanide, and in North America, cedar waxwings, those voracious gobblers of berries, have been poisoned by the plant, where it is often used to provide rabbit and deer-proof fencing. To read about one such incident, have a read here. I hope that we don’t start using the plant so extensively here in the UK, because I would fear for our berry-eating birds such as fieldfares and redwings, plus our occasional visitors the Bohemian waxwings. Fortunately, at the moment we tend to stick to pyracantha for municipal planting which has no such problems.  For my North American readers, suggested alternatives to heavenly bamboo include American beautyberry (Callicarpa Americana) and Northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), and there are some other ideas (plus a good explanation of why waxwings are particularly threatened by this plant) in the article here.

Heavenly bamboo is also considered to be an invasive plant in several parts of Florida and other southern states of the US. In spite of its toxicity birds often spread the seeds (presumably it’s only toxic if lots of berries are eaten) and the plant has rhizomatous roots that spread vigorously in the right conditions. It’s yet another example of a plant that is revered in its native habitat, and becomes a right old pain in the backside when it’s introduced somewhere else.

In Japan and in China, heavenly bamboo is a plant associated with New Year – the foliage and berries are brought into the house and placed on the domestic altar. The stems were put around the necks of children to ward off whooping cough, and the plant was often grown close to the house to ward off fire and to bring good luck, and near to outdoor wash basins to ward off the evil eye. In Japan, it was said that if you shared your nightmares with heavenly bamboo, it will protect you from your darkest fears. More pragmatically, in China the stems have been used to make chopsticks. 

Medicinally, all parts of heavenly bamboo have been used by practitioners, particularly for coughs, asthma and malaria. I note with some interest that it was also used to ‘quieten drunkards’, which is quite an attribute. It was also used as an antidote for food poisoning from fish, although that does feel a little bit ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ for my liking. The berries are also said to enhance virility, presumably if they don’t kill you first. You can read all about the medicinal uses of the plant on Steven Foster’s Herbalblog, and very interesting it is too.

I was rather intrigued by another use for heavenly bamboo, which is exclusively Japanese. For over 250 years, ‘snow hares’ or ‘snow bunnies’ have been made out of snow, with ears made from the leaves and eyes made from the berries of the plant. The results are very cute, as you can see. They were often made for ‘snow viewing parties’, along with other sculptures, in a similar vein to the snow men that we build but originally rather more formally. The advantage of something so small is that it can be brought into the house to be admired too.

If you look at the picture below you will see a snow hare in the bottom left of the painting, which is from Utagawa, Toyoharu, who lived from 1735-1814. The painting was probably made in 1772-4. There is a very interesting blog about the derivation of the ‘snow hare’ and its importance in Japanese and Asian folklore here.

Now, at this point I would usually be looking for a painting to share with you all, and, as you imagine, there are many lovely portrayals of heavenly bamboo, usually weighed down with snow and with innocent birds feasting on the berries (let’s hope they aren’t going to eat too many). But instead, howsabout this. This is a Noh costume, probably worn by an actor depicting an upper class woman, and dating to the second half of the eighteenth century. It is decorated with depictions of books (suggesting the rise in literacy of the period) and yes, those auspicious heavenly bamboo branches. Just look at that beautiful embroidery. I am awestruck.

Now, try as I might I cannot find us a poem this week, but as I think we’re all in need of as much beauty as we can muster, here are some more exquisite objects. Firstly, there is a fan depicting heavenly bamboo and two little flying insects (Bugwoman approves, of course). It was made in the first third of the Eighteenth century, by Jiang Tingxi, who lived from 1669 to 1732. Then there is a second fan, displaying a rather less happy outcome for at least one of the invertebrates but there’s nature for you. The fans came in a beautiful case, and are part of the Harvard Art Museums collection.

Whenever I despair of the stupidity, cupidity and sheer cruelty of human beings, our short-sightedness, our inability to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming evidence, our fearfulness and small-mindedness, two things help. Firstly, I think on the kindness and bravery of ‘ordinary’ human beings, who are often overcoming personal difficulties of the most extreme kind while seeking to make the world a better place for the rest of the extended community, human and animal alike. And secondly, I look at the beautiful things that people have made over the centuries and I feel the act of generosity that goes into any creativity, the way that people have always wanted to share their unique vision with others, and how greatly the world has been enriched and enlarged by these acts. Maybe, just maybe, we are not finished yet.

Photo Credits

Photo One from CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=658395

Photo Two by By KENPEI – KENPEI’s photo, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1508991

Photo Three from https://www.mamalisa.com/images/blog/maxresdefault-youtube.jpg

Photo Four from https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/49269?position=2

Photo Five from https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/211238?position=1

Photo Six from https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/408605743?width=3000&height=3000

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, it isn’t until I reach the water that I really start looking upwards. There are few places in central London where you can get a good view of the clouds, but as I start walking along the Thames on my way to the nature reserve at East India Dock Basin, I am struck by the ever-changing tumble and fluff of this late-winter sky. I stand for a bit, watching it change minute by minute, and am entranced.

It’s a brisk day, and I can almost hear the groaning of the ropes that once tethered ships to the quayside here, and the chink of rigging. It’s all in my imagination though, as although East India Docks could once handle 250 ships at a time (and played an important part in the construction of the Mulberry Harbours that were used during the D-Day landings), they have been closed since 1967.

Earlier than this, the wharf just along from the dock was the embarkation point for ships taking settlers to Virginia in 1606. Three small ships, the Godspeed, Susan Constant and the Discovery made the voyage with 105 people on board. It was an eventful trip, including periods when the ships were becalmed, and a mutiny by one Captain John Smith, who later married Pocahontas. The settlers founded Jamestown, but suffered famine, disease, and attacks by the local population – by 1609 only 60 of the original travellers were left. However, Captain John Rolfe arrived in 1610 bearing tobacco seeds, and the colony prospered when these were found to do well in the climate.

While the memorial is rather striking, I was more moved by the remaining wharfside furniture, now overgrown with moss and wildflowers.

The crows were playing in the breeze, plucking at one another’s feathers and generally being hooligans. Not a thing gets past them.

And here we are!

There is a little copse of alder and blackthorn, with the cow parsley already coming into flower and robins singing from every tree.

And then the basin opens up. I wonder if the birds will be nervous, but not a bit of it. There are mudflats, and shelduck (Tadorna tadorna) are sieving the water and looking for little bits of edible stuff. These are magnificent ducks, and they have a rather lovely call – my Crossley Guide describes it thus:

‘Quite noisy, the female making a series of belly laughs with a sarcastic ring, often accompanied by the fast, breathy whistles of the male‘.

Indeed.

The most noticeable noise, however, is the wailing and complaining  of the black-headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus). These gulls are never ‘black-headed’, even in summer when their plumage features a chocolate-brown balaclava, but in mid-winter they simply have a little half-circle of black where you might expect their ears to be. At this time of year there’s a whole spectrum of ‘headgear’.

But I have really come to see one particular species. One of my very favourite ducks is the common teal (Anser crecca), and in midwinter up to 400 roost here at night. I am hoping that there will be a few stragglers this morning, and so there are. It’s hard to get a decent picture of a teal, because they are not known as ‘dabbling ducks’ for nothing – those little heads are down most of the time, so it’s difficult  to get a photo of the russet, green and gold feathers on the head of the male, and the subtle beauty of the body feathers.

I walk around  the edge of the basin, and am much taken by some of the industrial history. Here are the only listed lock gates in London, for example,

And here is one of the beacons lit on 31st December 1999 to mark the new millenium.

There is a stand of palm trees in the middle of a disused car park, which I find a little confusing.

And the less than illustrious history of the Docklands is illustrated on the wall behind.

But as I walk around I get a better view of the teal. It does my heart good to know that this little bit of London is being reclaimed by the wildlife, providing a haven for bird travellers on their way north and south.

On the other side of the basin, a young heron is standing by the reeds, surrounded by stray plastic sheeting.

As I get to the end of the path, I turn back to see the panorama of water and cranes and new buildings rising and dereliction.

And a shelduck heads across the pond, trailing a long contrail like a passing plane.

I adore these little local nature reserves. They seem manageable, somehow: much as I love Walthamstow and Woodberry wetlands they are full day trips with lots of walking and lots of people. East India Dock Basin, and its neighbour Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park, feel like the kinds of places where you can sit in one place and take in everything. Maybe as I’m getting older, I am preferring to deep dive rather than skim the surface, and a small ‘patch’ makes that easier. I just know that I’ve had a couple of hours here, and am already a little bit in love with the place. Maybe one day I’ll come back at 3 p.m. on a darkening winter afternoon, and see if the tales of the roosting teal are true.

 

Dear Readers, I do not consider myself to be a fussy eater, but if I have a nemesis in the confectionary world it is liquorice (or licorice if you are North American). When I was a child I remember peeling all the sugar paste off of my Liquorice Allsorts and leaving that unholy black stuff for my mum, who loved it. The very worst were those sweets that not only contained liquorice but were coated in aniseed, my second most-hated sweetmeat ingredient. I take my hat off to anyone who actually enjoys them, you must have the stomach and tastebuds of a megatherium.

So, it was during my visit to Coal Drops Yard last week that I find myself thinking about liquorice, for the first time in many, many years. The plant that intrigued me was the Chinese species Glychorriza yunnanensis, but like all of the liquorice plants its Latin genus name means ‘sweet root’. The species normally used to create the sweets is British or American Liquorice (Glychorriza glabra), and it is a member of the pea family (Fabaceae) – as I mentioned last week, the seedheads of ‘our’ plant reminded me of a giant clover, but the ‘real’ liquorice plant looks even more leguminous.

All of the liquorice plants contain a substance called glycyrrhizin, which can cause adverse effects if more than 2mg of the pure active ingredient are eaten in a day. The chemical can wreak havoc with your blood pressure and give you diarrhoea – unfortunately it is one of the substances sometimes used as a purgative (along with senna and rhubarb) by those with anorexia/bulimia (see here for a most interesting article). Glycyrrhizin is 30 times as sweet as sugar, and so there is actually very little of it in liquorice sweets, with aniseed being used to produce most of the flavour, so you would have to eat a lot before you were poisoned (though a 56 year-old woman was admitted to hospital with muscle failure after eating 200g of Pontefract cakes (of which more later)).

I once had a spell working in the Netherlands (Rotterdam to be precise) and liquorice-flavoured sweets were a great favourite. Most reception desks had a bowl of wrapped sweeties to munch on while you waited to be admitted to the offices of the great and the good and many times I was caught out, throwing what I thought was a mint into my mouth only to discover that it was most definitely not. The worst occasion involved a salty-liquorice hard candy which I subsequently learned was called a zoute drop. I had just discovered my mistake when I spotted  the Finance Director descending in a glass lift like some kind of corporate angel. There being no time to deposit the sweet in a plant pot or wrap it in a tissue, I just had to swallow it. My face must have been a picture.

The romance of business travel is much overstated in my opinion.

If you are unfortunate, you may also come across salty liquorice in the Nordic countries.

In many cultures, the root of the liquorice plant is eaten without any preparation, as a breath-sweetener and an aid to digestion. I imagine that chewing on the fibrous bit of the plant gently releases the sweetness, but without the danger to the teeth. In the UK the first liquorice sweets were probably the Pontefract cakes made in Yorkshire: Spanish monks apparently brought the plant to Rievaulx Abbey near Thirsk, and the confectionary is still known as ‘Spanish’ in the area. Have a look at these little tarry tablets of pure hell. You’re welcome.

In the wild, British liquorice grows in a great swathe of Eastern Mediterranean countries, right the way through Central Asia and as far east as Mongolia. It loves well-drained soils and sunshine, and if cultivated, is harvested three years after planting. For a long time it was used as a flavouring for tobacco, particularly pipe tobacco. Our ‘insurance man’, Mr Sawtell, used to visit the house once a month to collect the payments on Mum and Dad’s life insurance, and I remember that his teeth were worn into a perfect inverse-V shape by his constant pipe smoking. I also remember a certain sickly-sweet smell to the miasma that hung around him constantly, these being the days before worries about passive smoking (or indeed active smoking). I wonder if that is one of the factors in my life-long loathing of this apparently innocuous substance?

Liquorice is also used as an ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine, being believed to harmonize the different elements of a prescription. Some studies consider it effective in the treatment of psoriasis-related infections and in the killing of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori, which is associated with stomach ulcers. It could possibly also be useful in the treatment of Hepatitis C.

And now, a poem. As we have seen, liquorice was once grown commercially in Yorkshire, but those days are largely gone (though one intrepid farmer decided to plant some liquorice to provide ‘chewing sticks’ for visiting children back in 2012). However, that lover of British Amazons Sir John Betjeman was moved to write about wooing one of his paramours in a liquorice field. The results are much what you’d expect from this poet who had a remarkable sense of rhythm and rhyme, even though, for me, he never really rose above the whimsical. I do love the line about the sturdy, flannel-slack’d legs however. It’s not that easy to find rhymes for ‘Pontefract’.

The Licorice Fields at Pontefract by John Betjeman

In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack’d
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By David Edgar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56641498

Photo Two by By en:User:Ballista – from English Wikipedia[1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1334460

Photo Three By Marcin Floryan – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1300952

Photo Four By Dave Spellman from Lancashire, England – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2210468

Photo Five By Sjschen (Sjschen) – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1951252

 

Dear Readers, it would be fair to say that Kings Cross, so long a combination of railwaylands, derelict buildings, architectural gems and dodgy kebab shops, has become something of a chichi destination. Take Coal Drops Yard, for example. There is an Alain Ducasse chocolate shop, an outpost of designer outlet Wolf and Badger and a branch of Miller Harris, the upmarket perfume emporium, on the site of what were once the warehouses for coal from South Yorkshire, transported to the station by train and then distributed via the Regent’s Canal. Bagley’s nightclub was also here, and many a loud and leery night was experienced here by a younger version of Bugwoman. But these days, I am here with camera in hand to give the landscaping a once over, before retreating to the relative affordability of East Finchley.

First things first though. I wanted to see what had happened to the gasholders that were once such a feature, just along the canal. The metal frames were carted off to North Yorkshire for restoration, and have now been reinstated. Three of the gasholders have been converted into luxury flats, while the fourth is left as just a frame, with a ‘park’ inside. Standing inside is a rather disconcerting experience – mirrors multiply the metalwork, and amplify and distort the landscape.

Someone clearly appreciates the park as a backdrop, as the grass is scattered with red rose petals, maybe from a wedding photographic session.

The flat conversions look very luxurious, as indeed they might ( I note that one is on the market, with Savilles, for £2.75m). But surely they must be very small, and awkwardly shaped? There are allegedly 145 flats in these three gasholders, and not a jot of affordable housing. Some folk, methinks, have more money than sense. Though if you work at Google it’s just a short jog to work, as the company is headquartered just across the canal.

However, I am here to look at the planting, and I find it very interesting, in a Piet Oudolf, swathes of grasses kind of way. I do like a seedhead at this time of year, and there are some truly spectacular ones on offer here. I would argue, however, that one of the loveliest plants that I saw was the magnificent alder tree on the other side of the canal – I was so impressed that it was my Wednesday Weed last week. This is a tree completely in keeping with its boggy, workaday surroundings, and none the worst for it.

But back to the actual gardens. Acclaimed plantsman and garden designer Dan  Pearson was responsible for the choice of plants – he has form in Coal Drops Yard, having created an installation called ‘Colourstream’ last year. Pretty, but not much here for pollinators, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a moral duty to help invertebrates when given an opportunity like this in a public place.

Still, Dan Pearson’s planting has more than made up for this with his planting in the gardens themselves, as you can see from the images on his website here, giving an impression of what it will all look like when it’s grown up a bit. At the moment, it’s still full of interest. There are several varieties of witch hazel, with its highly-scented, spidery flowers.

Lavender-blue irises are unpeeling their petals, exposing the tiniest hint of the egg-yolk yellow at their heart.

There are some magnificent seedheads. These below remind me of the reedmace in the pond, but I’m happy to be told otherwise, so don’t be shy!

And look at these truly magnificent thorns. I thought that this was something desperately exotic, maybe from Australia, but I am now persuaded that it might be a winged-thorn rose (Rosa sericea subsp omeiensis). This variety is known as ‘pterocantha’, which might mean ‘winged thorn’ (think ‘pterosaur’ and ‘pyracantha’).  The plant is grown specifically for its thorns, which apparently glow scarlet when backlit. Who knew? It apparently also has small white flowers and bright red hips, so it is definitely a plant for all seasons. It looks more like razor wire than any plant I’ve ever seen, and might be just the thing if burglars are regularly hopping into your garden and pyracantha hasn’t put them off.

The king (or queen) of the seedheads though is probably this plant – Chinese licorice (Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis). This is a member of the pea family, and the flowers look rather like giant mauve clover. If you had a big enough garden it would be worth growing just for that mass of brown, spiky seedcases though – they remind me of a cross between an ancient weapon, a hedgehog and a Sputnik. They were rustling most delightfully in the pre-Storm Dennis wind too, reminding me that a garden can be a complete sensory experience.

To round off the experience I decided that I would have a proper look in Coal Drops Yard. As usual, my eyes were drawn to the plants, and in particular the pots of heavenly bamboo (Nandina). Contrary to the name, this is not a bamboo but a member of the barberry family. What I love is the combination of bright crimson berries and the delicate foliage, and I’m not the only one – the plant seems to be having a ‘moment’ in the County Roads of East Finchley where I live, with several peeking out of pots and hedges.

And so, it’s time to wend my way back to Kings Cross station and to head home. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with what’s going on at Coal Drops Yard and round about – there are some interesting and unusual plants with year-round interest, and it certainly makes a change from alyssum and lobelia. I shall have to take a trip back in a month or so to see how it’s all developing, and to admire some of these plants in their summer garb.

And somehow, I manage to avoid buying anything in the shops. Sometimes, a bit of time spent with plants is more satisfying than anything that money can buy.

Photo Credits

Photo One from http://danpearsonstudio.com/colourstream-at-coal-drops-yard/

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, last week I was in Kings Cross, scouting about for a blogpost on the landscaping that has been done around the old gasholders and the new Coal Drops Yard, when I spotted this magnificent alder on the opposite side of the canal. It was absolutely dripping with catkins and tiny cones, and it reminded me how much I have always liked this native tree. I remember watching the blue and great tits feeding on the cones of an alder in Culpeper Garden in Islington: it was the first time that I’d noticed how the two species portioned out the tree, with the blue tits seeming to stick to the more delicate twigs and the great tits going for the cones on the more robust branches. It might not be the most elegant tree, nor the most august, but as it is a pioneer that grows in boggy ground which most other trees wouldn’t endure, it will always have a place in my heart.

The buds and young leaves of alder are sticky, and the bark exudes a thick resin, hence the Latin species name ‘glutinosa’. The tree is a member of the birch family (Betulaceae), and it is found across Europe, Central Asia and North Africa. It has been introduced to North America, New Zealand and Australia but because it can thrive in waterlogged and nutrient-poor soils, it is not usually seen as a major problem. The main reason for alder’s resilience is  its symbiotic relationship with a fungus, Frankia alnii, which forms nodules on the plant’s roots and fixes nitrogen from the air in a form that the plant can use, in return for the carbon produced by the tree. This relationship improves the fertility of the soil, making it available to other plants.

However, the seedlings of alder cannot survive overshadowing and so, as the wood that the alder and its fungal ‘friend’ have helped to create becomes more extensive, the alder itself is limited to the forest edges, or to the places which are too wet for other trees to grow. This kind of wet woodland is known as a ‘carr’ (which comes from the Old Norse ‘kvarr’, meaning ‘swamp’).

As you might expect from a tree that already has a healthy relationship with one fungus, there are several other species that are also only associated with alders. One is Russula alnetorum, with its magenta cap and pure white underside.

Another is the Alder Roll-Rim, which to my untutored eye has a decidedly chanterelle-ish look about it. This is why you should never send me out foraging for fungi.

There is even a fungus, catkin cup (Ciboria amentacea), that grows only on the fallen catkins of alder and willow. Don’t they look like the most exquisite miniature wine glasses? Truly, the world is full of wonders.

But sadly, another fungus has been having a most deleterious effect on the poor old alder – Phytophthora alnii, a recently evolved species, causes a lethal rotting disease, and has been spreading across Europe. It sometimes seems as if all of our trees are under constant threat from pathogens, which makes the need for better plant hygiene in nurseries and when shipping plant products even more important. Although the native alder is not a popular street tree the Italian alder, a close relative, is, especially in the City where the pollution, poor quality of the soil and general disturbance require a robust and resilient tree. Let’s hope that our alders, wild and ‘tame’  are able to survive this latest onslaught.

Alder is extremely useful to wildlife – we have seen how birds eat the cones, but the tree also attracts over 140 species of leaf-eating insect, and the caterpillars of many moths and butterflies feed on the tree, including the delightfully-named alder kitten (Furcula bicuspis) which is a most attractive moth.

Humans have also used alder extensively. The wood from alder trees is often used in marshy conditions: many of the piles under the city of Venice are made of alder timber, and the Roman engineer Vetruvius mentions that the causeway across the marshes of Ravenna was also made from the tree. The wood is not particularly hard, so it has also been used for coppicing, charcoal making (particularly for use in gunpowder factories)  and for paper. However, alder is also the wood of choice for the bodies of most Fender Stratocaster guitars, both because of its tonal qualities and because the light colour of the wood means that it can take a variety of finishes. If you are thinking of buying an electric guitar and aren’t sure what wood to get it in, there’s an interesting article here, though I suspect that the biological origin of something like a guitar is often overlooked (I certainly hadn’t given it much thought until now).

Alder was also said to be the wood of choice for woodworm larvae, and so branches of the tree were sometimes brought into houses so that the insects could munch harmlessly away on their favourite food instead of gnawing their way through the weight-bearing beams.

The various parts of alder produce a variety of different dye colours: the catkins produce a green dye, which has been associated with the ‘Lincoln green’ hue of the clothing of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. The bark contains a high degree of tannin, and can be used to dye clothes brown. The fresh-cut wood can produce a pinkish dye: when the tree is injured the exposed wood quickly turns brownish-red and looks as if it is bleeding, which may be why there is an Irish legend that it is unlucky to pass an alder tree when on a journey.

The photo below shows wool dyed with madder (orange), weld (yellow) and alder (brown).

Medicinally, the bark has been used in a decoction to treat burns, inflammation and sore throats. It was believed that alder leaves placed into the shoes before a long walk would soothe tired feet (and alder wood was also used to make clogs in the industrial North of England during Victorian times). The bark has also been used as a toothpaste. In the Alps, peasants would warm up bags of alder leaves and use them to relieve the pain of arthritis during the long, cold winter nights.

Although in the UK the alder is often viewed as something of a ‘weed tree’, it featured in one of the most important works of the Dutch Golden Age of landscape painting. ‘The Avenue at Middelharnis’ by Meindert Hobbema was created in 1689, and is thought to be an extremely accurate portrayal of this avenue of alders, which were planted in 1664. This was an unusual departure for Hobbema, who usually painted idealised landscapes made up of several different locations. The man working amongst the saplings on the lower right of the painting is also unusual – there had previously been a sense that these landscapes had just sprung into being, rather than being intensely man-made. Hobbema was largely thought to have stopped painting some twenty years before this work was made: he had a lucrative job as a ‘wine-gauger’, someone who collected the taxes on locally-produced wine. This is a particularly successful late work, described by the American Dutch art specialist Seymour Sleve as ‘the swan song of Holland’s great period of landscape painting which fully deserves its high reputation’. I am not a great fan of landscape painting, but there is something rather enigmatic about this work – it beckons me on, between those rather lanky alders, towards the church.

And oh, how happy I am to find this poem by Seamus Heaney, with which to end my celebration of the alder. To hear the man himself reading the poem, click here. How deeply he loved the land that he grew up in, and how poignantly it comes through in his work.

PLANTING THE ALDER

For the bark, dulled argent, roundly wrapped
And pigeon-collared.

For the splitter-splatter, guttering
Rain-flirt leaves.

For the snub and clot of the first green cones,
Smelted emerald, chlorophyll.

For the scut and scat of cones in winter,
So rattle-skinned, so fossil-brittle.

For the alder-wood, flame-red when torn
Branch from branch.

But mostly for the swinging locks
Of yellow catkins.

Plant it, plant it,
Streel-head in the rain.

© 2006, Seamus Heaney
From: District and Circle
Publisher: Faber & Faber, London, 2006

 

Photo Credits

Photo One By No machine-readable author provided. MPF assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=430484

Photo Two by By Cwmhiraeth – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21965251

Photo Three By Bernd Schade – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2138464

Photo Four By This image was created by user Irene Andersson (irenea) at Mushroom Observer, a source for mycological images.You can contact this user here. – This image is Image Number 197907 at Mushroom Observer, a source for mycological images., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18254339

Photo Five by By Irene Andersson – This image is Image Number 25465 at Mushroom Observer, a source for mycological images., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15986154

Photo Six by By Andreas Kunze – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14896380

Photo Seven by Ben Sale from UK [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Photo Eight from https://www.fender.com/articles/tech-talk/ash-vs-alder-whats-the-diff

Photo Nine from https://medieval-colours.co.uk/products/autumn-set-of-yarns-alder-madder-weld

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, with the audit at work  over and my period of full-time work at an end, I was able to head west to Dorchester to visit Dad. I have been so anxious about work this past few weeks that it was a relief to get back to some sort of normality – I think that I have been so worried and upset about Mum and Dad over the past few years that the slightest stress plunges me into a state of nervous agitation. I did read somewhere that once your cortisol levels have been consistently raised it takes a  very long time for them to return to normal, and so I suppose that’s why these basically trivial concerns have loomed so large. While the rational part of me knows that no one is going to die if I’ve done something wrong in the audit preparation, my body still thinks that maybe someone is actually going to die if the salary calculations are out. And then there’s that pesky perfectionism again. What would it feel like, I wonder, to drop all pretence that I can control everything? The very thought makes me anxious and so I shelve it, for now.

I get to the nursing home, and Dad is nowhere to be seen. I go to his room and there he is, curled up on the bed like a baby, deeply asleep. He is just finishing a course of antibiotics, and they generally knock him for six.

I go to my bed and breakfast, unpack, watch an episode of ‘Escape to the Country’ for light relief, and head back. Dad is still asleep. It’s a pleasure to see him sleeping so peacefully though – for years he’s  been a very agitated sleeper, I think because he was worried about Mum, who had a habit of falling out of bed.

And so it’s back to the bed and breakfast, and more television. Strangely enough, although it’s good to rest, it doesn’t actually help with the anxiety, which is there in the background, searching for something to be anxious about. Whenever I find something it’s like an electric shock of fear – heart racing, mouth dry, sometimes even a cold sweat.

Next morning, I decide that what I need more than anything else before I pop into see Dad again is a walk, so I head down the High Street to the riverside walk that we discovered at Christmas. I want to see where it goes, and how it connects to the rest of the town. It’s freezing cold but bright and breezy after the storms of the past few days.

The white stag, a remnant of the old inn that once stood on the site, marks the spot where I turn left and onto the path.

The water is high, and rushing along, and there is no handrail, which adds a pleasant frisson of jeopardy. After all, if I tumbled in I would have more to worry about than our procurement policy. There is a handsome gothic angel sitting on top of the wall opposite, head in hands. I wonder if I would have noticed it if my current state of mind wasn’t so peculiar.

There were a few mallards here in December, but now the breeding season is in full swing. One duck is being pursued by three drakes, and very sensibly escapes onto the bank to avoid their attentions.

Further along the stream I notice another duck swimming as hard as she can into the current, two drakes behind her. The flow of the water is dragging her back towards them, and I think that she can’t get up the momentum to fly away. I wonder what genetic accident has made the ‘courtship’ of these animals so brutal – females are often injured and sometimes even drown during what looks to me like a gang-rape. Surely this can’t be beneficial for the species as a whole?

And then there are what I think of as the ‘smug married’ ducks, who have found a partner and are all paired up already. They are dozing peacefully in the water-plants by the side of the stream, occasionally opening one lazy eye to watch the shenanigans going on all around them,  and if that’s not a metaphor for something I don’t know what is.

I take a detour through the tiny nature reserve even though I can clearly see that the boardwalk has turned into a ‘road to nowhere’.

I have noticed how each local area seems to have a weedy ‘spirit’ and around here it’s definitely the cuckoo-pint. The damp woods are bursting with them, mostly the native British species (Arum maculatum) with its bright green leaves, but a few examples of the Italian species (Arum Italicum) as well. It will be interesting to pop back in the summer to see it in flower. I love that this species generates its own heat to attract insects to pollinate it. All the old scientific certainties (about what is and isn’t ‘cold-blooded’ for example) continue to fall away as we learn more and more.

And there are the heart-shaped leaves of that spring ephemeral lesser celandine, with its yellow flowers just appearing here in the shade, though already in full bloom at Dorchester South station.

I love the reflections. It’s possible, just for a moment, to lose track of what is up and what is down, what is real and what is a mirror image.

And then it’s back onto the main path, where someone has provided some bird feeders, and the sparrows are taking full advantage.

I  follow the stream on around the back of the deserted prison, which is still waiting to be redeveloped. There is a path on the bank opposite which is no longer accessible to the public, and I see that a whole meadow of snowdrops has sprung up. It seems to me more beautiful for its isolation, and I am reminded that I was going to buy some bulbs in the green this year, having had minimal success with snowdrop bulbs planted in the autumn.

As usual, I notice that I have slowed down enough to start to use all of my senses now. I am taken with the sound of the water as it rushes past a wall and narrows into the smaller stream, and I see how the swirls of the water eddy out and around, each one similar but subtly different.

I notice the red stems of the dogwood in the scrappy woodland next to the path.

And, buried in the woodland I notice the yellow paintwork of some ancient and semi-derelict machinery, the seat torn, rust showing through. How expensive it must have been to buy, and how strange that someone would just leave it to become a pile of scrap metal.

Ahead, I see a low stone three-arched bridge, and some sluices for controlling the flow of the water from one stream to another – I have now reached a confluence of at least three streams. To my immediate right, water has been diverted from the stream running ahead.

The path continues to a junction where I can follow the river left or right,  and next time I think I might head right and see where that goes to. But today, I need to head back to the nursing home to see if Dad is mercifully awake, and so I head uphill and away from the river for today.

When I get to the nursing home, Dad is sitting in his favourite seat, next to the nurse’s station. It often takes me a second to recognise him – I think I am still expecting to see the bearded Dad with an Elvis Presley quiff who was his previous incarnation, rather than this frail, clean-shaven man with a side-parting. But he recognises me, or at least knows that I’m someone. His face brightens and that is worth everything.

We decide to go out for a coffee, and I get Dad wrapped up and pop his new hat on his head. Then we find a wheelchair, and off we go. Dorchester is a fairly hilly place, and so it’s an extremely good upper body workout. I was hoping to take Dad to the pub for lunch, but he wants to get back for lunch at the home. I suppose I should be happy that he feels so comfortable there, and wants to preserve his routine.

As we joggle across the cobbles, I notice that the hat has shifted so Dad can’t see a thing. I adjust it.

‘Thank you’, he says, ‘I thought the lights had gone out’.

We sit in the coffee shop, and Dad decides he doesn’t like the coffee. He eats a Portuguese custard tart with great enthusiasm though, and watches the usual stramash as people try to maneuver their prams through the maze of tables and chairs.

‘They could do with one less table in here’ he says, sagely.

And then it’s time for lunch, so we head back to the home. Today it’s chicken pie, and we chat with one of the other residents who has terrible arthritis in her hands but doesn’t seem to have dementia (though it can be hard to tell). Dad tells her that he’s going to have an operation on his hip. If he is, that’s the first that I’ve heard of it. He also tells us that he was in France last week. I think this unlikely, but when I have a chat with the staff nurse I discover that, no, he isn’t having any kind of surgery, but that, actually, the France thing is semi-true – the middle floor has been done up to look like a cruise ship, and every month they have a themed day for a particular country, with appropriate food and music and activities. Last week it was France, and it’s something of a bonus that Dad,who will probably never travel abroad again, thinks he’s been across the Channel.

I try to tell Dad that he isn’t going to have an operation, breaking my usual habit of meeting him where he is rather than imposing what’s ‘real’.

‘So, I’m not having the operation today’, he says.

‘You’re not having an operation at all, Dad’, I say.

He thinks for a minute.

‘Well, it’s good to know that i’m not having it today. I’m sure they’ll take me down when it’s time’.

I give up. It’s time to go and do some shopping for Dad (Polo mints and some kind of after-shave balm with no alcohol).

‘I’ll be back again later on Dad’, I say as I head off on my errands.

And he turns to the other resident and says

‘Yep, she’s going to be in to bore me to death for the next few days’.

And, strangely enough, I see something of the old Dad in this. He used to hate to be ‘crossed’ or argued with, and prided himself on the way that he would ‘get someone back’ if they upset him. I wonder if he was annoyed because I had tried to put him right about the operation?

‘Oh Dad!’ I said. I was about to say something cutting and sarcastic, but what’s the point?

‘Only joking’, he said, in a way that was also typical Dad.

Much as I loved both my parents, they weren’t saints. But with Dad, his determination not to be bested has probably been an asset when I balance everything up. And I know he loves me, because his heart is on show now in a way that he would never allow before he had dementia.

Now, I just have to think of an extremely non-boring outing for next time that I visit. Maybe sky-diving or something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, today I was searching for a new weed in East Finchley Station car park. I don’t know how you spend your Saturdays, but for me a plant hunt in a relentlessly urban setting, with tube trains whistling past my ear and the steady thrum of an emergency generator forming an interesting soundscape is as close to heaven as I can imagine. This is mainly because the auditors finished their work yesterday, and although they had many, many comments, none of them related directly to anything that I’d done. Hooray! Life can resume some vestige of normality, and nothing is more normal than peering at a tiny plant and realising that, humble as it is, this is one of the most scientifically important organisms of the past century.

Thale cress is a brassica (as was our hairy bittercress last week) and on the surface of it, there is nothing much to report. It is a winter annual, with a rosette of dark green, hairy leaves, and a long waxy stem bearing tiny white flowers. The ‘hairs’ on the leaves are called trichomes, and are interesting because in thale cress, each one is a single cell.

However, what makes thale cress so important is that it was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced: its small size, short life-span and relatively simple genetic structure made it perfect as a model organism in scientific research. It also has remarkably little ‘junk’ DNA.  Because it was (relatively) easy to map the genome of the plant to its appearance and behaviour, thale cress is used for experimentation in laboratories all over the world, leading to a much better understanding of flower and leaf development, light sensitivity and circadian rhythms. In spite of being self-pollinated, the plant is also surprisingly diverse, with over 750 naturally occurring varieties world-wide, and over 40 in the UK alone.This has led to a variety of commercial applications being suggested, from increasing the speed at which oranges develop to encouraging plants to produce more Omega-3 acid – this article by Peter Marren is a fascinating look at the different ways in which this humble ‘weed’ could be used.

Of the many discoveries that were made using thale cress as a model, one of the most intriguing to me is that the roots of a plant seem to channel light to their roots, where there are light sensitive cells that need illumination in order to grow.

Thale cress has also landed on the moon – the Chinese Chang’e-4 lander brought the plant in a closed environment together with silk worm caterpillars and potato seeds. In theory, the three organisms should be a microcosm, with the silk worms producing carbon dioxide for the plants, and the plant producing oxygen, provided, of course, photosynthesis can take place.

Thale cress is named after Johannes Thal, the botanist who first described the plant in 1573. Thal discovered it in the Harz Mountains in Germany, and thale cress does seem to be another of those mountain plants that does well as a weed, surviving light, infertile soil, a high degree of exposure and risk of drought.  It is a pioneer species, and I suspect that one reason that I’ve never paid it any attention before is because it is also ephemeral – with such a short lifespan it will be here one day and gone tomorrow. It is apparently sometimes used as a salad ingredient, but presumably it grows larger in less hostile environments, because you’d be a long time picking a bowl full in East Finchley station.

I found thale cress rather difficult to photograph – my camera really doesn’t like white flowers (they nearly always end up appearing overexposed) and my knees really don’t like crouching down for too long (poor old thing that I am). But for some really splendid pictures of this humble plant, have a look at the Wildflower Finder website. To whet your appetite, here is an example:

Medicinally, thale cress has been used in Indian traditional medicine to treat mouth sores and inflammation of the throat. However, scientists looking at the bacterial communities that live on the surface of the leaves of the plant have found that some of the bacteria are producing a substance that deters the growth of other bacteria – a novel antibiotic. If this proves to also be effective against the bacteria that cause disease in humans and animals, it would be a tremendous advance in the search for new methods of combatting infection. Many of our current antibiotics are becoming less and less effective as bacteria acquire immunity to them, so we need all the help we can get.

Now, thale cress is not a particularly beautiful plant. Monet preferred water lilies for some reason, and Van Gogh turned his nose up at the thale cress and went for sunflowers and irises instead. But there are some remarkable scientific photographs of thale cress, showing the intricate beauty of its structures.

How beautiful the tiny details of this plant are when viewed close up! And this is the point at which I would normally produce a poem. However, for the first time I can report that this plant actually is a poem. In 2003, a group of geneticists from Icon Genetics managed to encode a line from Virgil’s Georgics into the DNA of the line of thale cress that they were working with. The line was ‘Nec vero terrae ferra omnes omnia possunt‘ or ‘Nor can all of the earth bring forth all fruit alike‘. However, this was not a simple artistic act, but a way of copywriting the whole genetically modified organism – if it was ‘stolen’ it could be identified by the poem encoded into each of its genes. For more on this, and on the work of poet Christian Bok, who is attempting to encode a poem into a bacteria that will change and replicate as reproduction occurs, have a look here.

Thale cress is the fruit fly or laboratory rat of the plant world. It has been analysed and reorganised to produce plastic, to glow in the dark, and to produce oil . It is certainly something of a wonder plant, but while normal selective breeding (which humans have done for millenia) has limitations imposed by the genome of the organism, we are now swapping genes from one organism to another, sometimes for good, humanitarian reasons but often just because we can. I am no Luddite, but it seems to me that our technology may be running ahead of our ability to decide on the ethical implications of our discoveries. I believe that science can save us, but I also believe that we need to think through what the results of our experimentation mean. Looking at this tiny plant, so unassuming that it has taken me over six years to notice it, I wonder what other secrets it may hold, and what they will lead to. I only hope they will be used for everyone’s benefit, rather than to make profit for a few bloated corporations, naïve as that hope may be. It is long since time to cooperate rather than compete.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Heiti Paves – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29552690

Photo Two from http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/C/Cress(Thale)/Cress(Thale).htm

Photo Three from https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/9200579/xx8cd9g9.html

Photo Four from https://phys.org/news/2012-05-cellular-secrets-fatty-acid-production.html

Photo Five by Dr Heiti Paves at Tallinn University of Technology from https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2009-photomicrography-competition/arabidopsis-thaliana-thale-cress-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, it is the sixth anniversary of Bugwoman’s Adventures in London and, coincidentally, a year since Mum’s memorial service in Milborne St Andrew. What a year it’s been! My life has changed in all sorts of ways that I couldn’t have envisaged twelve months ago – I am now working, Dad is settled into his care home much better than I could ever have hoped, and I now have my TFL senior railcard so that I can commute to work for free. Of course, being sixty wasn’t logically surprising, but it was a bit of a shock to the system, particularly as I still feel about thirty. This year has been about being carried on in the flow of life even when I wanted to cling on to the bank. I feel like one of those trees that grows around a fence post – I won’t ever ‘get over’ the things that happened to my parents, but I might learn to accommodate them.

Onwards!

In February I paid a visit to the splendid Borough Gardens in Dorchester while I was visiting Dad, and was very taken by some of the trees and the immaculate grandstand. Dad often comes here when the weather is warm enough and, when I read this post, I remember how hard it was at first to come to terms with the ‘new Dad’ who had emerged since Mum died, and the dementia started to take hold.

I also found a new Roof Garden close to Fenchurch Street in London, where the plants were just becoming established. I must pop back in the spring to see how things have moved on.

Everything really kicks off in March. The frogs get up to their usual froggie misbehaviour.

The foxes become more apparent as the days get longer…

And last year, we visited John’s Mum and Aunts in Canada. In Collingwood we spotted a beautiful trumpeter swan in amongst all the mute swans, the first time that I’d ever seen one.

But when I got back to England, it was to find that I had some wildlife of my own. A heron was systematically eating all my frogs (and, as I now know, had stabbed through the lining of the pond). It was my first Mother’s Day since Mum died as well, so I was feeling in a reflective mood.

Closer to home, there was much joy to be had in East Finchley too: the community gardeners had been hard at work, and the garden centre was fully stocked.

And, finally, it was Mum’s interment, on a beautiful day when the air was full of the songs of robins.

June saw a visit to Kew to see the Dale Chihuly exhibition. I had mixed feelings about some of the pieces, though I loved it overall, and it was a splendid day. It also saw Dad visited in the care home by an alpaca, which was a source of some fascination and consternation for both of them.

I discovered yet another new garden, at the Crossrail station (still unopened!) at Canary Wharf. I loved that it was open to the sky so that birds and insects could get in and out.

Then, in July, it was off to Obergurgl in Austria, yet again, for our summer walking holiday. We had a very foggy walk from Hochgurgl back to the village, with sheep looming out of the mist in a most unexpected way.

Fortunately it brightened up a bit as the fortnight went on, and we had a splendid walk through the flower meadows, one of the highlights of my year.

When I got back from Austria, I went to see Dad. It was something of a bittersweet visit, as they often are, with Dad seeming calm one minute, agitated the next. But however he is, I am always so glad to see him. The way his eyes light up when he sees me, even though he doesn’t have the faintest idea who I am, melts my heart. However he is, he’s still my Dad.

Next week, we’ll have a look at the second half of the year. What a lot of ground we’ve covered!

Dear Readers, what a week it’s been! Between getting the pond cleaned, and preparing for the visit of the auditors next week I have hardly had a minute to breathe. On Saturday we were helping our aged auntie to clear out her house in Somerset – she is 92 years old and moved into a care home last year, but still wants to go through her possessions herself, as is her prerogative. Nonetheless, I was delighted to find the hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) in flower on top of a wall in Muswell Hill – for me it has always been a harbinger of spring, even though it has tiny flowers only a few millimetres long. I love those globular leaves (I’m sure that’s not the correct botanical term), and the way that the plant pops up on top of walls or in the few grains of soil at the edge of the pavement. I took a few photos and headed home rejoicing.

Until, that is, that I realised that I’d already written about hairy bittercress back in 2016. Alack! I have no time to find a new weed. I could attempt to pull  the wool over your eyes and tell you that this is in fact wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa),  but to be sure I would have had to dissect the flower to see if it had 6 stamens (wavy) or 4 stamens (hairy) and I didn’t do that. So, in reprise, here are a few of the things that I love about bittercress, regardless of its hirsuteness or degree of undulation.

Firstly, like many other crucifers (for although small this is indeed a cabbage), the bittercress has seeds which can be ‘fired’ with a touch – the scientific name for this is ‘explosive dehiscence’, which delighted me in 2016 and still delights me four years later. Apparently, the seeds can be fired up to 16 feet, and bittercress has even been observed using its ballistic ability to wallop approaching caterpillars, although whether this is coincidence or intention I would not like to say. When the auditors have finally left I am going to amuse myself by giving every other bittercress that I meet a gentle flick, just in case the seeds are ripe. I suspect that this method of seed distribution helps a little annual plant to give its offspring their best start in life, away from the shade and resource requirements of the parent. I suspect that many human parents might wish that they could do the same.

Secondly, bittercress is one of the Anglo-Saxon’s Nine Herbs Charm, which was a treatment for poisoning and for infection. The charm included mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), cockspur grass (or, according to some commentators, betony), bittercress, plantain, mayweed, nettle, crab-apple, thyme and fennel. The charm is recorded in an Anglo-Saxon medical collection called the Lacnunga, and the manuscript is preserved at the British Library – you can actually see it, and turn the pages, here. What a treat! According to that source of all wisdom, Wikipedia:

At the end of the charm, prose instructions are given to take the above-mentioned herbs, crush them to dust, and to mix them with old soap and apple juice. Further instructions are given to make a paste from water and ashes, boil fennel into the paste, bathe it with beaten egg – both before and after the prepared salve is applied.

Further, the charm directs the reader to sing the charm three times over each of the herbs as well as the apple before they are prepared, into the mouth of the wounded, both of their ears, and over the wound itself prior to the application of the salve.

I love that our commonest ‘herbs’ were included in the charm; people were familiar with them and their properties, and their ubiquity was no obstacle to their usefulness. It gives me heart that foraging for personal use is coming back, though I fear that, where our ancestors were attuned to what was available when, and how much of a certain plant it was appropriate to take, we may not necessarily all have those skills. Still, anything that makes us take notice of the plants and animals around us, and helps us to recognise and respect them is surely a step in the right direction.

Some foragers say that bittercress can be used a salad ingredient or a pot herb but, as I mentioned in my original post, it should be gathered from an unpolluted source. Plus, the leaves are so tiny that I can’t help wondering if it’s worth all the effort. If you are forever making bittercress pesto, do let me know! I was very happy to find this poem from the Incredible Edibles Todmorden site, which makes me think that maybe there is more to bittercress as a food ingredient than I figured. For those of you who don’t know about Incredible Edibles, it is a wonderful project in Yorkshire, which started with the idea of using public space in the town to grow fruit and vegetables for everyone to use. The naysayers were convinced that a few folk would do all the growing, and a few lazy folk would do all the eating, but instead it has been an extraordinarily successful project which has brought people together, provided fresh food for folk who would not otherwise have been able to afford it, and taught a whole range of gardening and cooking courses. It is positively heartwarming. Here is a link to the project site, and here is the poem about bittercress by Judy Kendall:

‘seeds like a weed

tastes nearly like watercress, like rocket

nutty peppery bittercress‘

And finally, a poem. This is not directly about bittercress, but it sums up how I feel about ‘weeds’,their stoicism and their secret power. For ‘God’ I would put ‘hope’ or ‘nature’ or ‘spirit’, but maybe, in the best of all worlds, they all come to the same thing.

Weeds by Philip Pulfrey

I learn more about God

From weeds than from roses;

Resilience springing

Through the smallest chink of hope

In the absolute of concrete.

Small seeds secreted

Under man’s designings;

Roads and city plans,

The humourless utopias

Of arid dreams.

It seems God smiles:

A head of gold

So delicate yet strength enough

To bring temples to their knees In time.

What is left of Greece Is the work of weeds:

A humble persistence

Of unobserved beauty

The force of life enduring

The follies of men.